Catching my balance.

Politics

12 February 2011

So sad that we have to go through this dog and pony show every few years (particularly when everyone knows that the agencies that are in the crosshairs every.single.time. make up a miniscule amount of the overall budget *and* as regranting agencies, they very often have both broader and deeper effects than many of the things that get saved. SIGH).

To wit: Congress is once again looking at cutting the NEA, the NEH, and NPR/PBS. Make you unhappy? Tell your congresspersons (it's easy! they do the looking up for you!) by going to:

If you'd prefer not to live in a cultural wasteland (I know, there is the Snooki, and this indicates that we may already be there, but think how bad it will be if that is *all* we have), please take three minutes to let the powers that be know that we need these institutions. Even if you are in a sad place, as I am, and have a complete philistine asshat for a rep.

17 August 2010

I was reading a recent copy of Newsweek at the gym and was baffled and infuriated by this article. Some of it is stuff I'd read before-- dropping birth rates in Western Europe and the US, what impact that might have (ie SS depends on having a workforce that can support the retired population, blah blah blah). But as soon as he gets to his cautions about what will lower the birth rate more in the US-- warning! don't become Denmark!-- I thought... what the hell are you talking about?

He quotes a doctor from John's Hopkins as the required caveat, along with a few possibilities for why European and Japanese fertility rates have been dropping:

“No one has a good answer” as to why fertility varies among countries, says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. Eroding religious belief in Europe may partly explain lowered birthrates. In Japan young women may be rebelling against their mothers’ isolated lives of child rearing. General optimism and pessimism count.

But he finds these reasons unsatisfying. He has a much more encompassing explanation for why Europeans are having fewer babies, and has a caution from a demographer from AEI (because AEI doesn't have an agenda or anything):

We need to avoid Western Europe’s mix of high taxes, low birthrates, and feeble economic growth. Young Americans already face a bleak labor market that cannot instill confidence about having children. Piling on higher taxes won’t help. “If higher taxes make it more expensive to raise children,” says demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, “people will think [twice] about having another child.”

Oh taxes are the boogeyman! Taxes scare people so much that they can't conceive (ha!) of having children. It's taxes!

Do people actually think like this? Sit down with their significant other, crunch the numbers, and say, "You know, honey, it would be great to have kids--I'd love a boy AND a girl!-- but our tax bracket is too pricey. Time to get your tubes tied!" Seriously, do normal people actually base their family planning on the tax rate?

He starts out talking about how expensive it is to have children. And this is something that I've contemplated quite a bit in terms of family planning. You know what I've thought about? The cost of daycare. Because we don't have any support for it in this country (gee, thanks "pro-family" politicians for whom subsidized daycare is practically a call to the hammer and sickle).